Stasha's wedding reception

Stasha Hughes' wedding reception yesterday at St. Marks in the Bowery, that wonderful 1799 church that I had vaguely thought wasn't really a church anymore, but it is, along with poetry and theatre and all kinds of cultural events. The party was in the actual sanctuary, tall and splendid, after hors d'oeuvres out in the garden, with Greek food, wine, coming-storm breezes, sirens. The main meal was Middle Eastern, delicious, toasts to the young people including in Greek from the groom's father. Arthur and Lainie, Ingrid and Jay, all reading poetry saying nice things. I got to meet Ingrid’s sister Nora at last, and also saw her brothers. Stasha gorgeous in a strapless ivory sheath gown, hair the same ivory color as gown, a superb silver bracelet of peas in a pod gift of the Mellissis family. I talked with Ingrid's Jay about fantasy fiction (he turned me on to Philip Pullman) and also some length with Sondra Olsen and Jean Verthein about state of publishing, reactions of people to 9-11, still living in New York, still afrair or not. I sat with Katherine Sorel and her husband. Katherine a childhood friend of Aaron Hughes, Ingrid's friend now. She teaches third grade at an alternative school in Carroll Gardens. Lots of talk about schools, about poetry, especially with Myra Shapiro whose memoir about coming to New York to write poetry is going to be published, and she and I talked about the difference in poetry and prose: she kept speaking of poems as something you can hold in your hand and also eat, which struck me as most interesting, that she conceives of poems not as something that comes out of her but as something she puts into herself. Novels, in particular, to me, are rivers you push your little boat into--so I suppose you put all of you into them in a way.

Myra's husband Harold and I talked about Israel: he flies over frequently, works with Peace Now and other pro-peace groups. Yay Harold!

And then, afterward, walking in mild rain, end of the storms, hurring across Manhattan once again to catch a train.